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ATLANTIC   READINGS 

Number  5 

A  FATHER  TO  HIS  FRESHMAN  SON 
A  FATHER  TO  HIS  GRADUATE  GIRL 

BY 

EDWARD  SANFORD  MARTIN 


tCfte  gltlantic  iWontljlp  ^resJs,  3nc. 

BOSTON 


<'^^^ 


Copyright,  1917, 
THE  ATLANTIC   MONTHLY  COMPANY 

Copyright,  1918, 
THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS.  Inc. 


**A  Father  to  His  Freshman  Son"  is  one  of  the  sixteen  essays  published  in 
the  Atlantic  Classics,  First  Series;  "A  Father  to  His  Graduate  Girl " 
was  originally  published  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly  for  June,  1917. 


A  Father  to  his  Freshman  Son 

By  Edward  Sanford  Martin 

No  doubt,  my  son,  you  have  got  out  of  me  already 
what  there  was  to  help  or  mar  you.  You  are  eigh- 
teen years  old  and  have  been  getting  it,  more  or  less 
and  off  and  on,  for  at  least  seventeen  of  those  years.  I 
regret  the  imperfections  of  the  source.  No  doubt  you 
have  recognized  them.  To  have  a  father  who  is  atten- 
tive to  the  world,  indulgent  to  the  flesh,  and  with  a 
sort, of  kindness  for  the  Devil  —  dear  son,  it  is  a  good 
deal  of  a  handicap!  Be  sure  I  make  allowances  for 
you  because  of  it.  Ex  eo  fonte  — fons^  masculine,  as 
I  remember;  fons  and  mons  and  pons,  and  one  other. 
Should  the  pronoun  be  illo?  As  you  know,  I  never  was 
an  accurate  scholar,  and  I  suppose  you  're  not  —  Ex  eo 
fonte  the  stream  is  bound  to  run  not  quite  clear. 

My  advice  to  you  is  quite  likely  to  be  bad,  partly 
from  the  imperfection  of  its  source,  partly  because  I 
am  not  you,  and  partly  because  of  my  imperfect  ac- 
quaintance with  the  conditions  you  are  about  to  meet. 
When  I  came  to  college  my  father  gave  me  no  advice. 
He  gave  me  his  love  and  some  necessary  money,  which 

[   45    ] 


•    •  •  •  2  •    • 


•'•'•. :  :•*';  .••  • :  :' •  •*  fAtiANT|c  Classics 

did  not  come,  I  fear,  as  easy  as  the  love.  His  venerable 
uncle  who  lived  with  us  —  my  great  uncle  —  gave  me 
his  blessing  and  told  me,  I  remember,  that  so  far  as 
book-learning  went,  I  could  learn  as  much  without 
going  to  college.  Still  he  did  not  discourage  my  going. 
He  was  quite  right.  I  could  have  got  more  book-learn- 
ing out  of  college  than  I  did  get  in  college,  and  I  sup- 
pose that  you,  too,  might  get,  out,  more  than  you  will 
get,  in.  Of  course,  that's  not  the  whole  story;  neither 
is  it  true  of  all  people.  For  me,  college  abounded  in 
distractions,  and  I  suppose  it  will  for  you.  And  I  was 
incorrigibly  sociable  and  ready  to  spend  time  to  get 
acquainted,  and  more,  to  stay  acquainted,  and  if  you 
have  that  propensity  you  need  n't  think  it  was  left  on 
the  doorstep.  You  come  by  it  lawfully.  Getting  ac- 
quainted is,  for  most  of  us,  one  of  the  important 
branches.  But  it's  only  one  of  them,  and  to  devote 
one's  whole  time  to  it  is  a  mistake,  and  one  that  the 
dean  will  help  you  avoid  if  necessary,  which  probably, 
if  I  know  you  at  all,  it  won't  be. 

It  is  important  to  know  people,  but  it  is  more  im- 
portant to  be  worth  knowing.  College  offers  you  at 
least  two  valuable  details  of  opportunity:  a  large 
variety  of  people  to  know,  and  a  large  variety  of 
means  to  make  yourself  better  worth  knowing.  I 
hope,  my  son,  that  you  will  avail  yourself  of  both 
these  details. 

This  is  a  mechanical  age,  and  the  most  obtrusive  of 

[  46  ] 


A  Father  to  his  Freshman  Son 

the  current  mechanisms  is  the  automobile.  It  has 
valves  and  cylinders  and  those  things  that  give  it 
power  and  speed,  and  rubber  tires  that  it  runs  on,  and 
a  wheel  and  steering-gear  and  handles  and  treadles 
by  which  it  is  directed.  Your  body,  especially  your 
stomach,  is  the  rubber  tires;  your  brains  are  the  cylin- 
ders and  valves;  and  your  will  and  the  spiritual  part 
of  you  are  the  chauffeur  and  his  wheel. 

I  beg  you  to  be  kind  to  your  stomach,  as  heretofore. 
It  needs  no  alcohol  at  your  time  of  life  —  if  ever  —  and 
the  less  you  find  occasion  to  feed  into  it,  the  more 
prosperous  both  your  physical  and  mental  conditions 
are  likely  to  be.  I  am  aware  that  life,  and  college  life 
in  particular,  has  its  convivial  intervals;  but  you 
might  as  well  understand  (and  I  have  been  remiss,  or 
have  wasted  time,  if  you  do  not  understand  it  already) 
that  alcohol  is  one  of  the  chief  man-traps,  abounding 
in  mischiefs  if  you  play  with  it  too  hard.  Be  wary, 
always  wary,  with  it,  my  son,  and  especially  with 
hard  liquor. 

Your  mind,  like  your  body,  is  a  thing  whereof  the 
powers  are  developed  by  effort.  That  is  a  principal 
use,  as  I  see  it,  of  hard  work  in  studies.  Unless  you 
train  your  body  you  can't  be  an  athlete,  and  unless 
you  train  your  mind  you  can't  be  much  of  a  scholar. 
The  four  miles  an  oarsman  covers  at  top  speed  is  in 
itself  nothing  to  the  good,  but  the  physical  capacity  to 
hold  out  over  the  course  is  thought  to  be  of  some 

[  47   ] 


402311 


Atlantic  Classics 

worth.  So  a  good  part  of  what  you  learn  by  hard 
study  may  not  be  permanently  retained,  and  may  not 
seem  to  be  of  much  final  value,  but  your  mind  is  a 
better  and  more  powerful  instrument  because  you 
have  learned  it.  ^Knowledge  is  power,'  but  still  more 
the  faculty  of  acquiring  and  using  knowledge  is  power. 
If  you  have  a  trained  and  powerful  mind,  you  are 
bound  to  have  stored  it  with  something,  but  its  value 
is  more  in  what  it  can  do,  what  it  can  grasp  and  use, 
than  in  what  it  contains;  and  if  it  were  possible,  as  it 
is  not,  to  come  out  of  college  with  a  trained  and  disci- 
plined mind  and  nothing  useful  in  it,  you  would  still 
be  ahead,  and  still,  in  a  manner,  educated.  Think  of 
your  mind  as  a  muscle  to  be  developed;  think  of  it  as 
a  searchlight  that  is  to  reveal  the  truth  to  you,  and 
don't  cheat  it  or  neglect  it. 

As  to  competitive  scholarship,  to  my  mind  it  is  like 
competitive  athletics,  —  good  for  those  who  have  the 
powers  and  like  the  game.  Tests  are  useful;  they  stim- 
ulate one's  ambition,  and  so  do  competitions.  But  a 
success  in  competitive  scholarship,  like  a  success  in 
competitive  athletics,  may,  of  course,  be  too  dearly 
bought.  Not  by  you,  though,  I  surmise,  my  son.  If 
you  were  more  urgent,  either  as  a  scholar  or  as  an 
athlete,  I  might  think  it  needful  to  warn  you  not  to 
wear  your  tires  out  scorching  too  early  in  life.  As 
things  are,  I  say  to  you,  as  I  often  say  to  myself; 
Don't  dawdle;  don't  scramble.  When  you  work,  work; 

[  48  ] 


A  Father  to  his  Freshman  Son 

when  you  play,  play;  when  you  rest,  rest;  and  think 
all  the  time. 

When  you  get  hold  of  an  instructor  who  is  worth 
attention,  give  him  attention.  That  is  one  way  of  get- 
ting the  best  that  a  college  has  to  offer.  A  great  deal 
you  may  get  from  books,  but  some  of  the  most  valu- 
able things  are  passed  from  mind  to  mind,  and  can 
only  be  had  from  some  one  who  has  them,  or  else  from' 
the  great  Source  of  all  truth.  I  suspect  that  the  subtle 
development  we  call  'culture'  is  one  of  those  things, 
and  the  great  spiritual  valuables  are  apt  to  come  that 
way. 

You  know  you  are  still  growing,  both  in  mind  and 
body,  and  will  continue  so  to  be  for  years  to  come,  — 
I  hope,  always.  One  of  the  valuable  things  about 
college  is  that  it  gives  you  time  to  grow.  You  won't 
have  to  earn  any  money  and  will  have  time  to  think 
and  get  acquainted  with  yourself  and  others,  as  well 
as  with  some  of  the  wisdom  that  is  spread  upon  the 
records.  You  would  be  so  engaged,  more  or  less,  in  these 
years,  wherever  you  might  be.  But  in  college,  where 
you  are  so  much  your  own  man,  and  are  freed  from 
the  demands  and  solicitudes  of  your  parents,  the  con- 
ditions for  it  are  exceptionally  favorable.  I  suppose 
that  is  one  thing  that  continues  the  colleges  in  busi- 
ness, since  I  read  so  often  that  at  present  they  are 
entirely  misdirected  and  teach  the  wrong  things  in  the 
wrong  way. 

I   49  1 


Atlantic  Classics 

But  nobody  denies  that  they  give  the  young  a 
breathing  spell.  Breathe,  my  son;  breathe  freely.  Re- 
member that  the  aim  of  all  these  prospective  processes 
is  to  bring  out  the  man  there  is  in  you,  and  arm  him 
more  or  less  for  the  jousts  ahead.  It  is  not  to  make  you 
over  into  somebody  else:  that  can't  be  done,  —  not  in 
three  or  four  years,  anyhow;  but  only  to  bring  out, 
and  train  as  much  as  possible  of  you.  There's  plenty 
in  most  of  us  if  we  can  only  get  it  out;  more,  very  much 
more,  than  we  ever  do  get  out.  So  will  you  please 
think  of  college  as  a  nursery  in  which  you  are  to  grow 
a  while,  —  and  mind  you  do  grow,  —  and  then,  pres- 
ently, to  be  transplanted.  It  is  not  as  if  college  was 
the  chief  arena  of  human  effort.  Nevertheless,  for  your 
effort,  while  you  are  there,  it  is  the  chief  arena,  and  I 
am  far  from  giving  you  the  counsel  to  put  off  trying 
until  you  leave. 

I  hear  a  good  deal  about  clubs  and  societies:  how 
many  there  are,  how  important  they  are;  how  it  is 
that,  if  a  youth  shall  gain  the  whole  of  scholarship 
and  all  athletics  and  not  'make'  a  proper  club,  he  shall 
still  fall  something  short  of  success  in  college.  Parents 
I  meet  who  are  more  concerned  about  clubs  than 
about  either  scholarship  or  deportment.  They  are  con- 
cerned and  at  the  same  time  bothered:  so  many  strat- 
egies and  chances  the  clubs  involve;  so  bad  it  may  be 
to  be  in  this  one;  so  bad  to  be  out  of  that;  so  much 
choice  there  is  between  them,  and  so  much  choice 

[  50  ] 


A  Father  to  his  Freshman  Son 

exercised  within  them,  by  which  any  mother^s  hopeful 
may  be  excluded. 

There  is  a  democratic  ideal  of  a  great  college  without 
any  clubs,  where  the  lion  and  the  lamb  shall  escort  one 
another  about  with  tails  entwined,  and  every  student 
shall  be  like  every  other  student,  and  have  similar 
habits  and  associates.  This  ideal  is  a  good  deal  dis- 
cussed and  a  good  deal  applauded  in  the  public  press. 
Whether  it  will  ever  come  true  I  can't  tell,  but  there 
has  been  some  form  or  other  of  clubs  in  our  older 
colleges,  I  suppose,  for  one  or  two  centuries,  and  they 
are  there  now  and  will  at  least  last  out  your  time;  so 
it  may  be  you  will  have  to  take  thought  about  them 
in  due  time. 

Not  much,  however,  until  they  take  thought  of  you. 

You  see,  clubs  seem  to  be  a  sort  of  natural  provision, 
just  as  tails  were,  maybe,  before  humanity  outgrew 
them.  I  guess  there  is  a  propensity  of  nature  toward 
groups,  and  the  natural  basis  of  grouping  seems  to  be 
likeness  in  feathers  and  habits.  The  propensity  works 
to  include  the  like  and,  incidentally  but  necessarily,  to 
exclude  the  unlike.  Whether  it  is  the  Knights  of  the 
Round  Table  or  the  Knights  of  the  Garter  or  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa,  you  see  these  principles  working.  The 
measure  of  success  in  a  club  is  its  ability  to  make 
people  want  to  join  it,  and  that  seems  to  be  best  dem- 
onstrated and  preserved  by  keeping  most  of  them  out. 

Now  the  advantages  of  the  clubs  are  considerable. 

[   51   ] 


Atlantic  Classics 

To  have  a  place  always  open  where  you  can  hang  up 
your  hat,  and  where  a  hospitable  welcome  always 
awaits  you,  and  where  there  is  enough  of  a  crowd  and 
not  too  much,  and  where  you  can  in  your  later  years 
inspect  at  all  times  a  family  of  selected  undergraduates, 
—  all  that  is  valuable  and  good,  and  pleasant  besides, 
and  this  continuity  of  interest  that  the  clubs  foster 
among  their  members  helps  to  keep  up  in  those  mem- 
bers a  lively  and  helpful  interest  in  their  college.  The 
drawback  to  the  clubs  is  their  essential  selfishness,  and 
their  disposition  to  take  you  out  of  a  large  family  and 
limit  you  to  a  small  one,  and  one  that  is  not  yours  by 
birth,  or  entirely  by  choice,  but  is  selected  for  you 
largely  by  other  persons. 

In  any  club  you  yield  a  certain  amount  of  freedom 
and  individuality,  the  amount  being  determined  by 
the  degree  in  which  the  club  absorbs  you.  Don't 
yield  too  much!  Don't  take  the  mould  of  any  club! 
A  college  is  always  bigger  than  its  clubs,  and  the  big- 
gest thing  in  a  college  is  always  a  man.  The  object  of 
being  in  college  is  to  develop  as  a  man.  If  clubs  help 
in  that  development,  —  and  I  think  they  do  help  some 
men,  —  they  are  a  gain;  but,  of  course,  if  they  dwarf 
you  down  to  the  dimensions  of  a  club-man,  they  are 
a  loss.  Some  men  take  their  club  shape,  such  as  it  is, 
and  find  a  sufficient  satisfaction  in  it.  Others  react 
on  their  clubs,  take  what  they  have  to  give,  add  to  it 
what  is  to  be  had  elsewhere,  and  turn  out  rather  more 

[     52     ] 


A  Father  to  his  Freshman  Son 

valuable  people  than  if  they  had  had  no  club  experi- 
ence. 

At  all  events,  don't  take  this  matter  of  the  clubs  too 
hard.  For  those  youths,  comparatively  few,  who  by 
luck  and  circumstances  find  themselves  eligible  to 
them,  they  are  an  interesting  form  of  discipline  or 
indulgence,  and  I  will  not  say  that  they  are  unim- 
portant. Neither  would  I  have  you  keep  out  of  them 
because  of  their  drawbacks.  If  you  begin  by  keeping 
out  of  all  things  that  have  drawbacks,  your  progress 
in  this  world  will  involve  constant  hesitations.  Alco- 
hol has  numerous  drawbacks,  but  I  don't  advise  you 
to  be  a  teetotaller.  Tobacco  has  drawbacks,  but  I 
believe  you  smoke  it.  Money  has  drawbacks,  and  so 
has  advertisement.  But,  bless  you,  we  have  to  take 
things  as  they  come  and  deal  with  them  as  we  can. 
The  trick  is  to  get  the  kernel  and  eliminate  the  shuck. 
A  large  proportion  of  people  do  the  opposite.  If  you 
can  manage  that  way  with  the  clubs,  —  provided  you 
ever  get  a  chance,  —  you  will  be  amused  to  observe 
in  due  time  how  large  a  proportion  of  your  brethren 
value  these  organizations  chiefly  for  their  shuck,  and 
grasp  most  eagerly  at  that.  For  the  shuck,  as  I  see  it, 
is  exclusiveness,  which  is  not  valuable  except  to  per- 
sons justly  doubtful  of  their  own  merits.  Whereas  the 
kernel  is  the  fellowship  of  like  minds  which  has  always 
been  treasured  by  the  wise. 

The  clubs,  my  son,  some  more  than  others,  are  re- 

[   S3   ] 


Atlantic  Classics 

cruited  considerably  from  what  is  known  as  the  leisure 
class.  To  be  sure,  I  don't  see  any  very  definite  or 
important  leisure  class  about  in  our  land.  Everybody 
who  amounts  to  anything  works,  and  always  did  and 
must,  for  you  can't  amount  to  anything  otherwise; 
but  the  people  who  have  money  laid  up  ahead  for 
them,  are  apt  to  work  somewhat  less  strenuously  than 
the  rest  of  us,  and  not  so  much  for  money.  Don't  get 
it  into  your  head  that  you  want  to  tie  up  to  the  leisure 
class,  or  that  the  condition  of  not  having  to  work  is 
desirable.  Have  it  in  mind  that  you  are  to  work  just 
about  as  hard  as  the  quality  of  your  tires  and  cylinders 
will  warrant.  Plan  to  get  into  the  game  if  you  have 
to  go  on  your  hands  and  knees.  Plan  to  earn  your 
living  somehow.  Don't  aim  to  go  through  life  spoon- 
fed; don't  aim  to  get  a  soft  seat.  If  you  do,  you  won't 
have  your  fair  share  of  fun.  There  is  no  real  fun  in 
ease,  except  as  you  need  it  because  you  have  worked 
hard.      \ 

I  say,  plan  to  earn  your  living!  Whether  you  act- 
ually earn  the  money  you  live  on,  makes  no  great 
difference,  though  in  your  case  I  guess  you  '11  have  to 
if  you  are  going  to  live  at  all  well.  But  if  you  get 
money  without  earning  it,  it  leaves  you  in  debt  to  so- 
ciety. Somebody  has  to  earn  the  money  you  spend.  In 
mine,  factory,  railroad,  or  office,  somebody  works  for 
the  money  that  supports  you.  No  matter  where  the 
money  comes  from,  that  is  true:  somebody  has  to  earn 

I   54  ] 


A  Father  to  his  Freshman  Son 

it.  If  you  get  it  without  due  labor  of  your  own,  you 
owe  for  it.  Recognize  that  debt  and  qualify  yourself 
to  discharge  it.  Study  to  put  back  into  the  world 
somewhat  more  than  you  take  out  of  it.  Study  to  be 
somewhat  more  than  merely  worth  your  keep.  Study 
to  shoulder  the  biggest  load  your  strength  can  carry. 
That  is  life.  That  is  the  great  sport  that  brings  the 
great  compensations  to  the  soul.  Getting  regular  meals 
and  nice  clothes,  and  acceptable  shelter  and  transpor- 
tation, and  agreeable  acquaintances,  is  only  a  means 
to  an  end,  and  if  you  accept  the  means  and  shirk  the 
end,  the  means  will  pall  on  you. 

I  said  'agreeable  acquaintances.'  A  very  large  pro- 
portion of  the  acquaintances  you  can  make  will  be 
agreeable  if  you  can  bring  enough  knowledge  and  a 
sufl&ciently  hospitable  spirit  to  your  relations  with 
them.  I  don't  counsel  you  to  cultivate  the  arts  of  pop- 
ularity, for  they  are  apt  not  to  wash,  —  apt,  that  is,  to 
conflict  with  inside  qualities  that  are  vastly  more  val- 
uable than  they  are.  But  keep,  in  so  far  as  you  can,  an 
open  heart.  There  is  no  one  to  whom  you  are  not  re- 
lated if  only  you  can  find  the  relation;  there  is  no  one 
but  you  owe  him  a  benefit  if  you  can  see  one  you  can 
do  him. 

Don't  be  too  nice.  It  is  such  an  impediment  to 
usefulness  as  stuttering  is  to  speech,  —  a  sort  of  spirit- 
ual indigestion;  a  hesitation  in  your  carbureter.  By 
all  means,  be  a  gentleman,  in  manners  and  spirit,  in 

[   55  ] 


Atlantic  Classics 

so  far  as  you  know  how,  but  be  one  from  the  inside 
out. 

If  you  had  come  as  far  as  you  have  in  Hf e  without 
acquiring  manners,  you  might  well  blush  for  your 
parents  and  teachers.  I  don't  think  you  have,  but  I 
beg  you  hold  on  to  all  the  good  manners  you  have, 
and  get  more.  Good  manners  seem  to  me  a  good  deal 
to  seek  among  present-day  youth,  but  I  suppose  they 
have  always  been  fairly  scarce,  and  the  more  appre- 
ciated for  their  scarcity.  Tobacco  manners  are  un- 
commonly free  and  bad  in  this  generation;  more  so,  I 
think,  than  they  were  in  mine.  Since  cigarettes  came 
in,  especially,  youths  seem  to  feel  licensed  to  smoke 
them  in  all  places  and  company.  And  the  boys  are 
prone  to  too  much  ease  of  attitude,  and  lounge  and 
loll  appallingly  in  company,  and  I  see  them  in  parlors 
with  their  legs  crossed  in  such  a  fashion  that  their  feet 
might  almost  as  well  be  in  the  ladies'  laps. 

Have  a  care  for  these  matters  of  deportment.  Be 
strict  with  yourself  and  your  postures.  Keep  your  legs 
and  feet  where  they  belong;  they  were  not  meant  for 
parlor  ornaments.  Show  respect  for  people!  Lord  bless 
me!  the  things  I  see  done  by  males  with  a  claim  to 
be  gentlemen:  tobacco-smoke  puffed  in  women's  faces; 
men  who  ought  to  know  better,  smoking  as  they  drive 
out  with  ladies;  men  who  put  their  feet  on  the  table 
and  expect  you  to  talk  over  them!  Show  respect  for 
people;  for  all  kinds  of  people,  including  yourself,  for 

[  56  ] 


A  Father  to  his  Freshman  Son 

self-respect  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  good  manners.  They 
are  the  expression  of  discipline,  of  good-will,  of  respect 
for  other  people's  rights  and  comfort  and  feelings.  I 
suppose  good  manners  are  unselfish,  but  the  most 
selfish  people  might  well  cultivate  them,  they  are  so 
remunerative.  In  the  details  of  life,  in  the  public  vehi- 
cles, in  crowds,  and  in  all  situations  where  the  demand 
presses  hard  on  supply,  what  you  get  by  hogging 
is  incomparably  less  than  what  you  get  by  courtesy. 
The  things  you  must  scramble  and  elbow  for  are  not 
worth  having;  not  one  of  them.  They  are  the  swill  of 
life,  my  son;  leave  them  to  swine. 

You  will  have  to  think  more  or  less  about  yourself, 
because  that  belongs  to  your  time  of  life,  provided  you 
are  the  sort  that  thinks  at  all.  But  don't  overdo  it. 
You  won't,  because  you  will  find  it,  as  all  healthy 
people  do,  a  subject  in  which  over-indulgence  tends 
rapidly  to  nausea.  To  have  one's  self  always  on  one's 
mind  is  to  lodge  a  kill- joy;  to  act  always  from  calcula- 
tion is  a  sure  path  to  blunders. 

Most  of  these  specific  counsels  I  set  down  more  for 
your  entertainment  than  truly  to  guide  you.  You 
don't  live  by  maxims  any  more  than  you  speak  by 
rules  of  grammar.  You  will  speak  by  ear  (improving, 
I  hope,  in  your  college  environment),  and  you  will 
live  by  whatever  light  there  is  in  you,  getting  more,  I 
hope,  as  you  go  along. 

Grow  in  grace,  my  son!  If  your  spirit  is  right,  the 

[   57   ] 


Atlantic  Classics 

details  of  life  will  take  care  of  their  own  adjustment. 
Go  to  church;  if  not  invariably,  then  variably.  They 
don't  require  it  any  more  in  college,  but  you  can't 
afford  not  to;  for  the  churches  reflect  and  recall  — 
very  imperfectly,  to  be  sure  —  the  religion  and  the 
spirit  of  Christ;  and  on  that  the  whole  of  our  civiliza- 
tion rests.  Get  understanding  of  that.  It  is  by  far  the 
most  important  knowledge  in  the  whole  book,  the 
great  fountain  of  sanity,  tolerance,  and  political  and 
social  wisdom,  a  gateway  to  all  kinds  of  truth,  a  recti- 
fying and  consoling  current  through  all  of  life. 


A  Father  to  his  Graduate  Girl 

By  Edward  S.  Martin 

For  you,  my  daughter  in  cap  and  gown,  the  reflec- 
tions that  greeted  your  graduation  in  white  muslin 
only  four  years  ago  will  have  to  be  revised.  All  the 
wisdom  of  the  ages  could  be  drawn  upon  for  admoni- 
tion, as  the  ministrations  of  the  Miss  Minervas  cul- 
minated on  that  June  morning,  and  you  made  your 
curtsy  to  the  world  that  was.  You  cast  about  for  a 
year,  inspecting  the  show  to  which  you  had  gained 
admission ;  and  then,  as  you  remember,  having  stronger 
aspirations  for  knowledge  than  for  social  exercises, 
you  went  to  college.  Here  you  are,  again  inspecting 
the  planet  you  were  born  into,  and  looking,  I  suppose, 
for  a  suitable  place  to  take  hold  of  its  activities. 

But  bless  me!  what  a  distracted  tragedy  of  a  planet! 
All  the  people  in  it  running  about  like  ants  in  an  ant- 
hill that  the  ploughshare  has  cut  through ;  every  tradi- 
tion upset;  every  habit  of  life  threatened  with  disturb- 
ance! Here  you  come,  bringing  a  new  education  to  a 
new  heaven  and  a  new  earth!   Take  your  parent  by 

[  59  1 


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the  hand,  my  dear,  and  lead  him  forth  into  the  un- 
known. This  is  no  world  of  his.  Yours  it  may  be; 
yours  it  must  be,  as  much  as  any  one*s;  yours  to  make 
and  shape,  and  share  its  destinies.  I  see  not  much 
further  into  it  than  that  it  must  have  work  for  such  as 
you ;  and  as  always  heretofore  you  have  done  the  task 
that  you  attempted,  I  have  the  more  faith  to  find  you 
equal  to  whatever  tasks  are  coming. 

Of  what  you  have  learned  in  these  three  scholastic 
years  now  crowned  with  A.B.,  I  have  only  vague  and 
general  knowledge,  but  I  know  that  you  have  par- 
taken faithfully  of  the  repast  that  was  set  before  you, 
and  that,  if  there  is  anything  good  for  girls  in  a  college 
education,  you  must  have  got  it.  I  can  get  assurance 
from  expert  educators  that  you  have  been  taught 
nothing  by  the  right  method,  and  little  or  nothing 
that  you  should  have  learned,  and  that  you  face  life 
again  not  really  much  to  the  good  for  all  your  recent 
endeavors.  But  that  I  shall  not  believe.  Between 
ideal  education  and  what  you  have  obtained,  no  doubt 
a  great  gulf  stretches ;  but  at  least  you  have  got  your 
share  of  what  has  been  offered  to  your  generation,  and 
I  own  that  I  look  upon  your  bachelor  of  arts  degree  as 
a  life-belt  strapped  around  you  as  you  stand  on  the 
deck  of  a  ship  that  navigates  a  zone  of  danger.  If  it  is 
any  good  for  a  girl  to  have  practiced  a  little  to  live  her 
own  life,  to  choose  her  own  companions,  to  form  her 
own  opinions  and  test  them  for  herself,  surely  this  is 

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A  Father  to  his  Graduate  Girl 

the  time  and  this  the  state  of  the  world  for  that  good 
to  become  apparent. 

I  notice  that  this  distinction  seems  to  rule  between 
the  girls  who  come  out  of  boarding-schools  and  you 
beginning  Bachelors:  that  they  look  forward  to  a  little 
play-time  period,  and  that  most  of  you  look  for  '  a  job.' 
The  difference  does  not  go  so  deep  as  appears,  for  both 
of  you  are  after  training,  with  a  view  to  future  em- 
ployment, and  are  likely  in  the  end  to  come  to  similar 
activities.  For  women  are  women,  and  will  be  to  the 
end;  and  the  work  they  do,  in  the  long  run  and  with 
due  exceptions,  will  be  women's  work.  The  boarding- 
school  misses  are  quite  as  apt  to  pick  up  valuable  les- 
sons in  applied  energy  in  their  playtime,  as  you  will  be 
in  the  employment  that  you  hope  to  find. 

At  least,  I  suppose  that  you  hope  to  find  it.  All  the 
graduating  college  girls,  having  had  a  training  and 
learned  something,  —  at  least,  they  hope  so,  —  want 
to  try  it  out  on  real  work  and  find  out  what  it  is  good 
for.  Certainly  this  is  their  year  if  there  ever  was  one. 
The  young  men  graduates  of  colleges  in  '6i  found  the 
Civil  War  ready  made  for  them,  and  most  of  them, 
deferring  all  other  occupations,  went  into  it.  Here 's 
a  war  ready  for  you,  and  one  that  promises  to  have  a 
job  waiting  for  every  woman  that  is  ready  for  it.  It 
may  be  a  job  that  women  have  been  used  to  do ;  it  may 
be  something  quite  novel  and  untried.  If  the  latter, 
so  much  the  better  for  you  whose  training  is  believed 

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to  have  made  you  a  little  readier  than  your  sisters  to 
try  out  experiments.  A  little  more  than  other  girls, 
the  girls  who  have  been  to  college  are  used  to  variety 
of  association.  They  are  apt,  not  only  to  know  more 
girls  than  their  boarding-school  sisters,  but  more 
kinds  of  girls.  In  some  of  the  big  girls*  colleges  in  the 
great  cities  there  is  obtainable  an  experience  of  human 
fellowship  something  like  that  which  imaginative 
persons  see  as  one  of  the  precious  possibilities  of  uni- 
versal military  service.  If  the  dog- tent  sheltering  two 
young  citizens  from  widely  different  social  layers  is  an 
instrument  of  democracy,  so  is  the  classroom  bench  of 
a  big  girls*  college  in  a  great  city. 

Three  years  ago  we  thought  that  employments  for 
women  had  been  marvelously  amplified,  and  so  they 
had.  The  girls  had  flocked  into  offices;  they  were 
typewriters  and  stenographers,  lawyers,  doctors,  edi- 
tors, cashiers  and  bookkeepers;  they  did  most  of  the 
work  of  the  great  department  stores;  they  were  deep 
in  social  service,  and  had  almost  monopolized  the  great 
profession  of  teaching.  But  since  the  war  began,  and 
men  by  the  million  have  been  called  into  it,  armies  of 
women  almost  equally  large  have  been  poured  into  the 
places  these  men  left  vacant.  In  Europe  before  the 
war  women  contended  for  employment ;  but  since  the 
war  began,  almost  all  employments,  except  actual  mil- 
itary service,  have  contended  for  the  women.  Women 
censor  the  mails ;  women  make  the  munitions ;  women, 
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A  Father  to  his  Graduate  Girl 

even  in  England,  tend  the  cattle  and  till  the  land.  Only 
by  this  vast,  wholesale  cooperation  of  the  women  of  the 
nations  with  the  men  of  the  nations  has  the  war  been 
kept  going.  Whenever  there  was  work  to  be  done  and 
lack  of  men  to  do  it,  women  have  been  enlisted. 

And  that,  my  daughter  with  your  sheepskin  in  your 
hand,  is  the  world  into  which  you  have  graduated.  It 
is  a  world  in  crisis;  a  world  struggling  toward  a  salva- 
tion only  to  be  won  by  bitter  effort;  a  world  to  which 
these  states  have  suddenly  been  joined  again  after 
four  generations  of  separation.  Physically  we  Ameri- 
cans are  far  distant  from  the  war  and  its  agonies,  but 
spiritually,  mentally,  nationally,  it  has  become  our  af- 
fair and  we  are  joined  to  it.  It  is  our  concern  now  that 
it  shall  come  out  right  and  do  its  appointed  work  of 
destruction  and  renovation.  Our  great  estate  and  all 
our  powers  are  committed  to  that  vast  duty.  No  one 
of  us  is  exempt  from  contributing  what  we  have  and 
what  we  are  to  that  endeavor. 

The  deep  impressions  which  affect  our  lives  are  apt 
to  come  suddenly,  to  be  matters  of  weeks  or  months  of 
very  active  thought,  rather  than  of  years  of  slow  expe- 
rience. Like  enough  you,  my  daughter,  and  your  co- 
evals, will  have  your  ideas  about  many  important  mat- 
ters shaped  by  the  thoughts  that  are  born  of  this  crisis 
in  human  affairs.  No  one  who  is  really  alive  will  escape 
those  thoughts.  They  will  concern  the  relations  of  na- 
tions and  of  all  the  people  who  compose  them.  One  of 

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Atlantic  Classics 

the  great  lessons  that  the  war  is  teaching  is  the  power 
and  duty  of  cooperation ;  that  no  one  may  Hve  for  self 
alone,  but  each  for  all  and  all  for  each.  Wherever  you 
take  hold  to  help  in  these  affairs,  you  will  work  with 
some  one  in  a  common  cause;  you  will  work,  not  for 
yourself  alone,  but  for  your  country ;  not  for  your  coun- 
try alone,  but  for  France,  for  England,  for  Belgium, 
for  Serbia,  for  Russia,  for  Poland,  for  Italy,  for  Japan, 
for  China,  for  all  the  world,  to  save  it  from  the  ruin  of 
misapplied  knowledge  and  selfish  counsels.  Nothing 
like  this  vast  cooperation  was  ever  known  before.  It 
used  to  be  said  that  the  United  States  had  learned  to 
think  in  the  terms  of  a  continent,  and  that  Europe  had 
got  to  learn  that  lesson.  But  now  people  must  think  in 
terms  of  all  the  continents.  Nothing  less  than  the 
whole  world  is  in  the  pangs  of  readjustment;  of  hardly 
less  than  the  whole  world  will  you  be  a  citizen  when 
this  work  is  finished. 

But  as  you  will  remain  distinctively  a  citizen  of  the 
United  States,  so,  whatever  you  find  to  do,  you  will  re- 
main distinctively  a  woman.  No  extension  of  oppor- 
tunity or  novelty  of  occupation  is  going  to  swerve  you 
from  that  inexorable  condition.  The  work  that  you  are 
to  do  in  the  world  is  to  be  woman's  work.  It  may  be 
driving  an  aeroplane  or  a  motor-car,  or  making  muni- 
tions, or  keeping  cows  or  chickens,  or  raising  cabbages, 
or  folding  bandages,  or  nursing,  or  teaching,  or  knitting 
socks,  or  organizing  enterprises,  but  if  you  do  it,  you 

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A  Father  to  his  Graduate  Girl 

make  woman*s  work  of  it,  for  you  are  more  important 
and  less  changeable  than  any  occupation,  and  you  will 
dominate  the  work,  and  not  the  work  you. 

If  the  work  does  not  suit  you  as  a  woman,  you  will 
drop  it  presently,  because  it  is  more  important  in  the 
long  run  that  you  should  be  a  woman  and  do  a  woman's 
work  than  that  any  specified  job  should  continue  to  be 
done.  In  an  emergency,  to  be  sure,  the  specific  job  may 
be  all-important  because  the  continuance  of  women's 
true  work  depends  on  it.  But  that  is  a  temporary  mat- 
ter, to  be  cured  at  the  first  chance,  so  that  the  world 
may  notecase  to  be  worth  living  in,  or  run  out  of  people. 

I  observe,  and  you  will  notice,  that  notwithstanding 
the  great  incursion  of  women,  of  late  years,  into  one  or 
another  department  of  business,  they  are  not  of  much 
account  as  fortune-builders.  Some  of  them  earn  or 
make  a  good  deal  of  money,  but  they  seldom  get  rich 
by  their  own  exertions,  and  nearly  all  the  rich  women 
have  inherited  their  fortunes  from  men.  Moreover,  the 
women  who  are  most  successful  as  money-makers  are 
not,  as  a  rule,  the  most  successful  as  women.  The  wom- 
en seem  to  be  a  consecrated  sex,  too  valuable  to  be  em- 
ployed in  mere  money-getting.  Vast  numbers  of  them 
earn  a  living  —  sometimes  a  good  one  —  and  have  to ; 
but  few  of  them  get  rich.  It  is  common  for  a  young 
man  to  start  out  deliberately  to  accumulate  a  fortune. 
It  is  very  uncommon  for  a  young  woman  to  do  so. 
She  is  much  more  likely  to  accumulate  a  young  man. 

1 65  ] 


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Will  you  please  take  note  of  that,  my  daughter?  In 
spite  of  your  cap  and  gown,  you  are  still  a  consecrated 
vessel,  designed  rather  to  confer  benefits  upon  the 
world,  than  exact  an  excessive  recompense  for  living  in 
it.  If  you  are  to  have  much  money  you  must  get  it  in- 
directly. Your  life  is  too  valuable  to  be  sacrificed  to 
getting  rich.  I  believe  you  will  feel  that  to  be  true,  no 
matter  what  you  undertake ;  feel  that  you  cannot  af- 
ford to  give  up  being  a  woman  and  fulfilling  a  woman's 
destiny,  for  the  sake  of  winning  the  common  rewards 
that  are  open  to  men.  For  you  know  man's  great  re- 
ward is  woman.  She  is  the  crown  of  his  endeavors  and 
often  the  goal  of  them,  but  not  of  yours. 

One  of  the  consolations  of  these  extraordinary  times, 
so  terrible  and  so  afflicting  in  many  aspects,  is  that 
they  are  bringing  us  closer  to  the  French,  the  people  in 
our  modern  world  who  seem  to  know  best  how  to  live, 
and  who,  we  suspect,  have  come  the  nearest  to  solving 
the  problem  of  the  woman's  place  in  life.  Of  course 
they  are  not  a  perfect  model  for  us,  and  of  course  there 
are  things  that  they  may  learn  of  us  as  well  as  we  of 
them;  but  the  Frenchwoman's  place  in  life,  as  we  hear 
of  it,  seems  the  nearest  right  that  any  people  has  work- 
ed out.  It  is  a  place  of  power  and  honor,  a  place  in 
which  the  woman  is  valued  to  the  full  as  a  woman,  and 
in  which  she  cooperates  intimately  and  effectively  with 
the  man.  Probably  we  idealize  the  Frenchwoman's 
position  somewhat,  but  as  we  see  her,  she  is  not  only 
[  66  ] 


A  Father  to  his  Graduate  Girl 

the  decoration  of  life,  but  ideally  the  helpmate  of  the 
man;  helping  with  her  head  and  with  her  hands,  with 
her  companionship,  her  love,  her  thrift,  her  skill,  her 
labor.  We  hear  of  her  potency  in  business  affairs ;  of  her 
share,  at  least  equal,  and  apt  to  be  superior,  in  the 
management  of  farm  and  shop  and  household.  We 
have  learned  all  over  again  these  last  three  years  what 
wonderful  stuff  there  is  in  the  French,  and  wish  there 
was  more  of  it  in  the  world.  Never  was  mankind  so 
much  disposed  to  go  to  school  to  France,  nor  ever  had 
this  French  tradition  of  woman's  power  and  place  and 
work  a  better  chance  to  influence  mankind.  Perhaps  it 
will  help  to  temper  in  this  land  and  generation  the  pro- 
pensity to  make  a  battle  cry  of  'Women  for  women,* 
with  a  prospect  that  it  will  yield  in  its  turn  to  the 
slogan,  *  Every  woman  for  herself!' 

Not  with  any  such  motto,  my  daughter,  will  civiliza- 
tion go  any  gait  but  backwards.  The  women  of  France 
have  won  great  honor  by  great  service,  but  their  work 
has  been  woman's  work.  They  have  kept  their  hands 
on  the  details  —  the  things  that  make  the  difference 
between  profit  and  loss  in  trade  or  agriculture,  and  be- 
tween paths  of  pleasantness  and  bad  going  in  our  daily 
walk.  They  are  wise  in  the  technique  of  living  —  not 
for  themselves  alone,  but  for  France,  her  men  and  her 
children. 

If  France  is  pleasant  and  Frenchmen  love  it,  it  is 
Frenchwomen  who  h^ve  made  it  so.   If  life  is  pleasant 

[  67  ] 


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to  French  men  and  they  love  it,  it  is  French  women 
who  have  made  it  so.  If  French  men  love  France  more 
than  life,  it  is  because  in  a  conquered  France,  French 
life  could  not  flourish,  or  French  women  train  it  and 
make  it  worth  living  to  French  men.  It  is  a  great  office 
to  make  life  pleasant ;  to  make  it  worth  living.  So  far 
as  it  is  done,  it  is  done  chiefly  by  women,  but  not  by 
women  whose  motto  is  'Women  for  women,*  or  'Every 
woman  for  herself.* 

It  is  the  fault  of  people  who  are  good  at  details  that 
they  are  prone  to  make  details  overshadow  life.  Per- 
haps the  Frenchwomen  have  room  among  their  virtues 
for  that  fault.  It  is  one,  my  daughter,  that  your  col- 
lege education  should  help  to  keep  you  out  of.  I  don*t 
suppose  that  college  has  made  you  proficient  in  the  de- 
tails of  life,  but  at  least  it  should  have  qualified  you  to 
see  the  forest  in  spite  of  the  trees.  You  ought  in  the 
end  —  and  long  before  the  end  —  to  see  life  broader 
and  truer  for  having  been  to  college;  and  because  of 
those  three  years  of  reading  and  listening  and  thinking, 
should  be  able  to  bestow  your  mind  upon  the  details  of 
life  with  less  risk  of  their  absorbing  you. 

But  the  best  thing  to  save  the  spirit  from  being 
swamped  by  details  is  religion,  which  keeps  the  imag- 
ination alive  and  constantly  reminds  the  hands  and  the 
brain  what  their  activities  are  about.  Most  of  the 
French  women  are  religious,  and  that  helps  immensely 
to  humanize  them  and  keep  them  pleasant  in  spite  of 
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A  Father  to  his  Graduate  Girl 

their  strong  bent  toward  thrift.  Perhaps  after  the  war 
France  will  offer  the  world  a  new-style  Christian 
church,  a  church  of  France  —  Catholic  as  France  is 
Catholic,  free  as  France  is  free,  bomething  like  that  is 
coming  to  all  the  world,  and  coming,  sooner  or  later, 
out  of  the  great  dissolution  of  obstacles  to  human  unity 
that  is  the  great  fruit  and  consequence  of  the  war. 

The  wonderful  war!  The  wonderful  war!  Praise 
God  that  we  are  in  it,  and  practicing  to  beat  the  Devil 
along  with  our  brethren !  Be  confident,  my  child,  in  the 
destiny  of  mankind !  Here  you  come  with  that  inno- 
cent sheepskin  into  a  world  loaded  with  new  debts, 
mourning  its  innumerable  dead,  grieved  at  the  havoc 
done  to  it,  filled  with  orphans  and  widows  and  still 
struggling  toward  a  goal  obscured  by  smoke.  But  it 
is  a  world  of  promise  beyond  all  the  promise  of  a  thou- 
sand years,  in  which  whoever  is  strong  in  the  faith  may 
hope  everything  that  saints  foresaw  or  martyrs  died  to 
bring.  Be  glad  it  is  your  year.  '  A. B.  1917*  is  distinc- 
tion in  itself.  Accept  it,  my  daughter,  and  make  it 
good! 


4 


i(^lV 


ATLANTIC  READINGS 


To  be  of  service  to  teachers  who  wish  to  supplement 
books  already  used  in  English  classes  (whether  Atlantic 
Texts  or  not)  with  inexpensive  reprints  of  especially  at- 
tractive contributions  from  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  we  are 
issuing  as  a  series  of  Atlantic  Readings  separate  stories 
and  essays,  some  of  which  are  already  included  in  Atlantic 
Texts  and  others  intended  for  future  volumes. 

Since  the  size  and  typography  of  the  pamphlets  are 
identical  with  those  of  Atlantic  books,  groups  of  these 
reprints  can  be  combined  and  bound  as  separate  volumes 
at  the  discretion  of  teachers  who  find  special  combinations 
of  essays  and  stories  serviceable  for  their  individual  classes. 

To  make  the  class-room  choice  as  flexible  as  possible 
and  to  render  the  readings  of  real  service,  The  Atlantic 
Monthly  Press  will  be  glad  to  cooperate  with  teachers  who 
are  using,  or  planning  to  use,  either  reprints  or  Atlantic 
Texts.  Suggestions  are  welcome  and  will  be  acted  upon 
whenever  practicable. 

If  the  teacher  is  planning  to  use  a  number  of  selections 
from  the  Atlantic  Readings  series,  it  may  prove  a  saving 
of  expense  to  have  them  bound  in  a  single  volume. 

ADDRESS  BUREAU  OF  SERVICE 

THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS 

41  MOUNT  VERNON  STREET,  BOSTON 


